Wireless devises for communication are also known as e.g. User Equipments (UEs), mobile terminals, wireless terminals and/or mobile stations. Wireless devises are enabled to communicate wirelessly in a communication network such as a mobile network, sometimes also referred to as a wireless communications system, a cellular radio system or cellular networks. The communication may be performed e.g. between two mobile terminals, between a mobile terminal and a regular telephone and/or between a mobile terminal and a server, such as server providing video streaming service, via a Radio Access Network (RAN) and possibly one or more core networks, comprised within the communications network. A RAN is part of a wireless telecommunication system. It implements a radio access technology and it resides between a wireless device such as a mobile phone, a computer, or any remotely controlled machine and provides connection with its Core Network (CN).
Wireless devises may further be referred to as mobile telephones, cellular telephones, computers, or surf plates with wireless capability, just to mention some further examples. The wireless devises in the present context may be, for example, portable, pocket-storable, hand-held, computer-comprised, or vehicle-mounted mobile devices, enabled to communicate voice and/or data, via the RAN, with another entity, such as another wireless device or a server.
Some cellular communications networks cover a geographical area which is divided into cell areas, wherein each cell area is served by a base station, e.g. a Radio Base Station (RBS), which sometimes may be referred to as e.g. eNodeB (eNB), NodeB, B node, Base Transceiver Station (BTS), or AP (Access Point), depending on the technology and terminology used. The base stations may be of different classes such as e.g. macro eNodeB, home eNodeB or pico base station, based on transmission power and thereby also cell size. A cell is the geographical area where radio coverage is provided by the base station at a base station site. One base station, situated on the base station site, may serve one or several cells. Further, each base station may support one or several communication technologies. The base stations communicate over the air interface operating on radio frequencies with the wireless devices within range of the base stations. The base stations and wireless devices involved in communication may also be referred to as transmitter-receiver pairs, where the respective transmitter and receiver in a pair may refer to a base station or a wireless device, depending on the direction of the communication. In the context of this disclosure, the expression Downlink (DL) is used for the transmission path from the base station to a mobile terminal The expression Uplink (UL) is used for the transmission path in the opposite direction i.e. from the wireless device to the base station.
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile communication system, which evolved from the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and is intended to provide improved mobile communication services based on Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology. UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) is essentially a radio access network using wideband code division multiple access for communication with terminals. The 3GPP has undertaken to evolve further the UTRAN and GSM based radio access network technologies.
In 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE), base stations, which may be referred to as eNodeBs or even eNBs, may be directly connected to one or more core networks.
Pre-paid and on-line charging is very important for customers buying pre-paid subscriptions for their user equipments. The services are paid in advanced for a given bucket size, and the service is valid until the quota of the bucket has been consumed. This is known solutions for people skilled in charging/billing systems. In FIG. 1, the traffic between a client of a wireless devises and a Local Cloud is depicted and marked with a dashed line. The Local Cloud has a server that may provide high Quality of Experience (QoE)-streaming to the clients QOE-server, i.e. a local Content Distribution Network (CDN) server or a gaming server. A CDN is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers. Those distributed CDN serves content to end-users with high availability and high performance. A Protocol Proxy in the Local Cloud is used to interact with communication between the UE and the application server on Internet, and the Local cloud internal functions such as a QoE server that determines the best way how and when data is to be sent to the UE Terminal. An example of an application proxy a protocol proxy such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)- or Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) proxy that is extended with functions that also communicates with the network in order to determine how to achieve an optimal QoE delivery. A Hypervisor in the Local Cloud is used to allow virtualized functions to be deployed and run on the physical computing infrastructure in the Local Cloud. “R” in the Local Cloud is the site Router and it is used to establish a connection path to network node 10, i.e. to the S1-local-end-point function/black small box in the picture. S1U represents the GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) Layer 2 tunneling user plane of the 3GPP defined S1 reference point and S1C is the control plane of the 3GPP defined S1 reference point that is used to set-up, remove GTP tunnels, as well as transferring mobility events and status in relation to the user terminal movements.
A problem in a Mobile-Edge Architecture is that a complete core-network need to be deployed to support the charging function. One solution is to copy local traffic in a network node 10 that is located in the user plane path between the eNB and the Layer 2 GTP termination of S1 user plane reference point where all user data sent and received in a Radio Access Bearer (RAB) is copied to a more centralized core network where the charging function is located. The charging functions may be located in the Serving (S)/PDN (P) S/P-Gateway (GW), S or in a combined node. The charging systems may e.g. include Online Charging System (OCS) and Offline Charging System (OFCS).
The Data Centre in FIG. 1 represents a centrally located site where the core network and other network functions are deployed, such as Policy Control and Charging (PCC) functions that defines per user traffic enforcement rules that the PGW shall enforce, and if out of quota take appropriate action according the described policy, e.g. redirect of users traffic to an Out of quota WEB server.
Both directions of the copied traffic is sent upstream so the S/P-GW detects the direction of the copied data such that the interfaces for Lawful Interception (LI) and charging act correctly on the copied streams and indicate appropriate direction to external LI-GW and Policy and Charging Control (PCC) functions.
Subscriptions are usually limited by data volume also referred to as data buckets, that the end-user can consume during e.g. a month, i.e. the transferred data volume e.g. in Mbytes over an access network. A byte-counter is shown as an entity for counting the consumed data volume for the user, i.e. the subscriber. It may be two different counters, one per direction.
When the subscriber has reached the quota, the user's traffic will be forced routed to Out-of-quota WEB-server. The WEB-server will inform the user that the quota is reached, i.e. bucket limit is reached, when the user requests a WEB-page on Internet.
The breakout function to steer traffic to a Local Cloud may be based on 5-tuple, or parts of it, from the user data packet or be done on L2-parameters such as e.g. Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) or GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) parameters. GTP is a group of IP-based communications protocols used to carry General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) within GSM, UMTS and LTE networks. Also S1-control parameters may be used to determine function of the local break-out function. S1 is a standardized interface between eNB, also referred to as base station, and the Evolved Packet Core (EPC).
U.S. Pat. No. 9,071,450 B22 discloses a system for charging and policy for services at the edge of a mobile data network. This document assumes that the optimization function has its own charging GW function. This means that it is multiplying the interfaces to the charging function. In this solution with multiple sources reporting charging data there is a coordination and management problem that require more work in configuring all interfaces and also functional extensions in the charging system to coordinate several sources reporting; in case the user is mobile.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,173,081 discloses a system and method for enabling interactions between a policy decision point and a charging system. This document relates to a system for managing group-based charging for network usage and spending in a communications network. In an embodiment of this system, a method may include receiving a charging event that identifies a user equipment from a charging component, applying the charging event, and determining whether the user equipment identified in the charging event is a member of the group of user equipment's identified in a subscription request. A problem with this solution is that the policy decision point that communicates with the charging system and policy decision point needs to be distributed. This solution will increase the complexity in data correlation that all distributed points have the same policy for a mobile user, i.e. it is an increased risk of errors.